Years ago when I was first introduced to Thai food, I remember seeing a menu item listed as “three-flavour sauce”. At the time I was vegetarian and the dish with that name involved fish, so I didn’t see the need to investigate further to what those 3 flavours might be. A few years later when my vegetarian days were done with, I went ahead and tried the fish dish with the mysterious sauce. It was sweet and sour and salty and I loved it.

I’m sure the traditional recipe calls for tamarind for the sour, palm sugar for the sweet and fish sauce for the salty. However, when I found myself with a bevy of vegetables from our CSA and some leftover turkey from our Thanksgiving meal on Sunday, I decided to play around with those 3 traditional flavours for the dressing. Rice vinegar, soy sauce and honey are the stand-ins and make this meal no less enjoyable. However, the thing that really made this dish stand out is the ginger. I used a very healthy amount of freshly minced ginger and that provided a very delicious pow-to-the-tastebuds effect. Hello, ginger! We eagerly went back for seconds wanting more of those flavours in our mouths. There’s also a good deal of heat from the sriracha sauce (aka ‘cock sauce’) and the diced birds eye chilis, but you can play with those flavours how you like.

This made great use of our leftover turkey from Thanksgiving. After a day or two of heavy meals this light dish was sweet relief! It was so crunchy from all the vegetables and the colourful sweet peppers and crispy cucumbers added a welcome refreshing element. Diced cherry tomatoes and cilantro would be good here as would some cold vermicelli rice noodles for additional heft. And of course, I used turkey here since I had it on hand, but cooked chicken breast is a worthy sub.

So creative and different, plus I love anything with a good kick of ginger! Unfortunately, as I ate turkey dinner at my parents’ place, I did not come home with any leftovers. However, I would love to try this with chicken!